You are here

Giving Birth to Change

By Sat Purkh Kaur Khalsa, Kundalini Research Institute

When we think of nine months, we often think of the gestation period–the time it takes to create a baby. But it can also be thought of as how long it takes to create a new life. I’m a few days shy of nine months without sugar. And in many ways it marks the beginning of a new life for me. When I got sober many years ago, they said, “The only thing you need to change is everything.” At the time the notion of everything seemed a bit daunting; but slowly, slowly, over the years, everything has changed. Sugar and caffeine are just two more things I’ve been blessed to slough off. But it feels like the mark of a completely new life. It feels like the life of a yogi; the life I’ve been talking about for so many years may finally be realizing itself, and it’s all grace.

The fascinating part of change is that we resist it for so long. We don’t like where we are but we’re so afraid of the unknown that we cling to what we know, even when it’s painful.

Here’s a short visualization that has helped me release my grasp and allow the new to come in gracefully:

Step One: Recognize the thing you want to change and accept it; embrace it fully. Acceptance doesn’t mean apathy; acceptance means deeply recognizing your powerlessness over a certain behavior or habit. In that moment of deep acceptance, the power to change arises because you’ve quit resisting it; your energy is freed up to make a change. The power of the Infinite is allowed to move within your life.

Step Two: See your life, fully realized and free of the habit or behavior.

Step Three: With the visualization in your mind, sense the response in your body. Is it fear? Is it contraction? Is it confusion? Notice the sensations. The physical reaction in our bodies is what keeps us in the loop of addictive or demoting habits, otherwise known as self-sabotage.

Step Four: Stay with the body’s sensations and breathe deeply. Breathe slowly and deeply until the reaction in the body subsides and the heart begins to open. Once the mind and body have reached a complete state of relaxation, smile. This is where change begins.

Step Five: Jap! Repeat! Use the quality of the Manas mind, your sensations, to be in the present moment. Use your awareness to notice the sensations, the contraction, the fear, and use the breath to change and allow new sensations to come in. Expand your awareness and become a part of everything around you.

Fear of change comes from a disconnect between ourselves and the world. We don’t trust. Yogi Bhajan said that we can know the Unknown; it’s one of the human talents—intuition—which is the fruit of inner assessment (see kriya). Allow yourself to experience your sensations and expand the idea of you, your Self, out into the wide, wide world. Free yourself. This is the way of the Jiwan Mukt–liberated while alive.